Stop Shopping for a Faster Horse: How to Choose a Project Management Platform in 2026
Barry Kelly·Oct 21, 2026·7 min read
In my last role, over about five years, our company paid for licenses to Airtable, Monday, Smartsheet, Asana, Jira, Miro and Trello. And I am sure there were plenty more that people used on their own to manage their time and priorities. Every one of those tools was bought to solve the same problem. None of them did. That is not a knock on the tools. It is a sign that we kept shopping for faster horses.
The short answer
Most companies choosing a new project management platform are shopping for a faster horse: the same boards, tasks and status fields, only slicker. If you are a project manager, you have probably lived through at least one of these switches. The better question is not "which tool tracks work best?" It is "which tool does the tracking for us?" In 2026, that means a platform that captures what happens in your meetings, keeps itself current, and flags risk before anyone has to write a report.
What does "a faster horse" mean in project management?
A "faster horse" is an improvement to the old way of working, when what you need is a different way of working. The line usually credited to Henry Ford goes: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." There's no solid evidence he said it, but the idea sticks because it is true. We describe solutions in terms of what we already know.
I see this play out with project management software all the time. The faster horse looks like this:
- A cleaner Kanban board than the one you have now
- More custom fields, views and automations
- Better Gantt charts and dependency lines
- A nicer mobile app
None of these are bad. But they all assume the same job: a human gathers information, types it into a tool, and keeps it current. The faster horse makes that job a little easier. It does not make it go away.
How many project management tools do companies use, and how often do they switch?
Most organizations are not running on one project management platform. They are running on several, and many are already eyeing the next one. The research is remarkably consistent:
- 83% of PMO and portfolio professionals work in hybrid environments, where dedicated systems sit alongside spreadsheets and manual processes. Only 17% have a dedicated solution for project and portfolio management (Nordic PMO Reality Report 2026, 789 respondents).
- 55% of project management software buyers said adding AI functionality was the top trigger for their most recent purchase (Capterra 2025 Project Management Software Trends, 2,545 respondents).
So the switching is not slowing down. If anything, AI has given every team a fresh reason to go shopping. The risk is that they come home with a horse with racing stripes.
Why do most project management tool switches disappoint?
Switching tools rarely fixes the real problem, because the real problem is not the tool. It is the manual work of keeping the tool true. Every platform is only as accurate as the last person who updated it. When updates lag, the board drifts from reality, and you fall back on meetings, chat threads and spreadsheets to find out what is really going on.
The pattern is familiar:
- The team picks a new tool with a better feature list.
- Adoption looks great for a few weeks while everything is fresh.
- Updates slip as deadlines hit. Decisions made in meetings never make it into the system.
- The project manager becomes the full-time translator between conversations and the tool.
- A year or so later, someone suggests switching again.
And the kicker? The real cost is not the license fee. It is the time. PMO teams spend up to half a working week every month on manual reporting alone (Nordic PMO Reality Report 2026).
This is not a regional quirk. Wellingtone's 2026 State of Project Management Report found that 72% spend half a day or more collating reports every month, 44% are somewhat or very dissatisfied with their organisation's current level of project management maturity, and only 36% of organizations always or mostly complete projects on time. More tools have not fixed any of that.
I wrote about the human side of this in Why Project Management Still Feels Like an Uphill Battle. The short version: project management is not broken because we lack software. It is broken because most software does not reflect how the work really happens.
What should project managers look for instead?
Look for a platform that removes the input work, not one that makes input faster. The "car" in this analogy is a system that listens to where project work actually happens, keeps itself current, and tells you what needs your attention. Here is how the two compare.
| Job to be done | Faster horse | Car |
|---|---|---|
| Capturing decisions | PM takes notes, then types them in | Meetings are captured and decisions logged automatically |
| Action items | Someone remembers to create tasks | Tasks are pulled from conversations and assigned |
| Status updates | Team members update fields manually | Status reflects what was said and done |
| Risk visibility | Risks surface when someone raises a flag | Blockers and risks are flagged as they come up |
| Finding information | Search boards, docs and chat threads | Ask a plain-language question across all projects |
| Reporting | PM builds the weekly update by hand | Summaries are drafted for review |
If a vendor's demo is mostly about views, fields and drag-and-drop, you are looking at a faster horse.
How is AI changing project management software?
AI is shifting project management software from a system of record to a system of intelligence. A system of record stores what people tell it. A system of intelligence works out what is happening from the conversations, documents and meetings where work actually gets decided.
Be careful, though: many tools have bolted a chatbot onto the same old board. That is a faster horse that can talk. The difference shows up in three places:
- Where the data comes from. Does the AI only read what people typed into the tool, or does it capture meetings and conversations directly?
- What it does unprompted. Does it wait for questions, or does it surface risks, blockers and changes on its own?
- How far it reaches. Can it answer questions across every project, or only inside one board at a time?
The appetite is real. 79% of teams with AI features in their project tools say they use them in daily work (Capterra). But using a chatbot every day is not the same as having a tool that does the work for you.
The goal is not to replace the project manager. It is to give them back the hours they spend on administration, so they can spend them on judgment.
How do you evaluate a project management platform? 7 questions to ask
Judge every platform by how much manual work it takes away, not how many features it adds. Here are the questions I would bring to every demo:
- How much of the platform's data is entered by people, and how much is captured automatically?
- What happens to decisions made in a meeting? Show me the path from conversation to task.
- How does the platform tell me something is going wrong before the deadline slips?
- Can I ask a plain-English question across all my projects and get a sourced answer?
- How long until a new team gets value, measured in days rather than months of setup?
- What does it connect to: calendar, video meetings, email, chat, existing PM tools?
- How is our meeting and project data secured, and who can see what?
A strong answer to question 1 matters more than strong answers to the other six combined.
Frequently asked questions
Did Henry Ford really say "faster horses"?
Probably not. There is no reliable record of Ford saying it, and the quote appears to have surfaced long after his death. It is still a useful shorthand for incremental thinking.
What is the biggest mistake when choosing project management software?
Comparing feature lists instead of measuring how much manual input each tool requires. The tool with the most features often creates the most upkeep.
How many project management tools does a typical company use?
More than one. The Nordic PMO Reality Report 2026 found that 83% of PMO and portfolio professionals work in hybrid environments where dedicated systems are combined with spreadsheets and manual processes. Only 17% have a dedicated project and portfolio management solution.
Is AI project management software ready for real teams?
Yes, for capturing meetings, extracting action items, summarizing status and flagging risks. Final decisions and stakeholder judgment should stay with the project manager.
Should we replace our current project management tool?
Not necessarily. Many teams get more value by adding an intelligence layer on top of their existing tools than by migrating everything again.
What is a project intelligence platform?
A project intelligence platform uses AI to capture project conversations, keep project status current, surface risks, and answer questions across projects in plain language.
Sources
- Hypergene, "The Nordic PMO Reality Report 2026". Based on 789 PMO managers, portfolio managers and project leaders in Sweden, Norway and Finland. Source of the 83% hybrid environment figure, the 17% dedicated solution figure, and the half a working week reporting figure.
- Capterra, "AI in Project Management: 2025 Software Trends Report", July 2025. Survey of 2,545 respondents across 11 countries. Source of the 55% AI purchase trigger figure and the 79% daily AI use figure.
- Wellingtone, The State of Project Management, 2026. Source of the 72% report collation figure, the 44% dissatisfaction figure and the 36% on time completion figure.
Stop upgrading the horse
The next project management platform you choose should change how project information is gathered, not just how it's displayed. I have watched teams switch tools again and again, hoping the next board would finally stay current. It never does, because the real record of a project lives in the conversations where people align, decide and commit.
That is why we built Superdone. It is an AI project intelligence platform that captures every signal from your meetings, surfaces every risk, and automates the busywork, so project managers can get back to leading projects.
If you are evaluating platforms right now, take the seven questions above into your next demo. And if you want to see what the car looks like, try Superdone.